


Feel

by bluemoonwings



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Trenzalore, Sexual Content, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:40:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoonwings/pseuds/bluemoonwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events at Trenzalore, Vastra is  filled with emotions and desires to feel her wife. To know that she is real, alive, and safe is the most desperate desire in her heart. She also realizes in little ways how she took her wife for granted at times. The beginning of a new promise is struck in the dance of love that ensues.<br/>*<br/>Another trial awaits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Last night, my friend gave me this prompt at TWO IN THE MORNING. I've been obsessed ever since. It is actually complete but I will take time in releasing it...to torture her...and to refine it for timing and flow. 
> 
> Dedicated to Cynthia

A feral cry rose above the shrieking wind, both plaintive and unexpectedly violent. It was a wail of abject despair, carrying beneath it, and entwined with a scarlet undertone of rage so great it shuddered with madness.

  
There was a strange blue box rising on one end of the dark horizon, and tall pillars of a shelter of stone made by future people who, in this disjointed time line, were already ancient and dust. This air, which had not yet even come to be, but was contaminated with the sickening wafts of temporal miasma leaking from the swollen blue box, swirled around the only living thing on the landscape.

  
A lone figure clutched in one hand a sidearm that had just slain one of her closest friends and comrades—and more, _unmade_ him. Yet, for all her regret and rage over having had to do so, it was nothing as she looked only to her other hand which had held the hand of a human girl. Yet, at the same time, had not, for the girl had no longer existed. Thus, the figure here who remained, displaced now in time , would inevitably forget that all of this had transpired—or not—as she was gradually integrated back into all the subtle dimensions of reality.

  
Yet, Madame Vastra refused to let go, lest some trace of Jenny’s existence escape and be lost among the winds of a dying world. There it was again. It was Vastra herself who issued the tortured cry. Combining together the deepest, physically manifested emotional trauma, she let herself scream into the darkness, tying her voice to her indescribable grief. It tore at the deepest recesses of her core and with it echoed the psychic edge of her mental shields in tattered shards, ripping across space from the darkest recesses of her core being. She was, with each howl, coming apart at the seams. It seemed like an eternity, but had anyone been listening (and she prayed that the Goddess of old in fact was), they might have heard the one intelligible word she enunciated from a language native to a nearly unknown and long extinct world.

“ _Jenny_!”


	2. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They address one another in the deepest way they know.

 

 

 

 

Several hours later… 

 

The TARDIS had dropped them just inside the main sitting room where an eclectic collection of furniture greeted the two women. There was a short scuffle as the inexhaustible Strax the Sontarran argued with the Doctor over what he might do, and agreed to make himself scarce for a few days. Neither woman even looked back, much less participated, and finally the TARDIS made its familiar whooshing sound and vanished. 

Jenny felt strangely out of place here, as if she had been dropped into a faithful reconstruction of her home. It was exactly as she had left it, down to her coat draped over the back of a chair just there. Yet, it was not quite the same. The very air seemed oddly different. She almost wished Strax had stayed to fill the place with his bumbling but hearty, efficient noises. He always brought a special life to the place. 

Life. Jenny shuddered. _Life. Exactly. I died_ , she thought to herself, and could not quite bring herself to face it fully, for it seemed impossibly farfetched. She did not want to believe it.  

Something was different to be sure. Nothing seemed exactly right—because, she realized, she was suddenly exactly and particularly _wrong_.  It was tragic and frightening all at once.  

She started when a gentle touch rested on her shoulder. It was Vastra. Her wife. At once, she felt very afraid that she would seem as muted and surreal as the rest of the world, but no. She was more alive and vibrant than anything Jenny had ever seen. She became very aware of her own heartbeat which quickened, rushing suddenly. 

Vastra’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. She had heard it too. Her lips moved then, almost wistfully, or restlessly, as if wanting to speak, but unsure as to how to start or what to say. It was very unlike her. 

Jenny moved first, but not with her body. Rather, she reached out her mind and found Vastra’s open only to her, in a mixture of their usual intimacy paired with an as-yet unseen sense of surrender. Inward, she coaxed her inquisitive, alert mind over contours and textures of the landscape of Vastra’s mind. The topography was not foreign; she knew it almost as well as her own, but there was something here that she wanted to see. She felt it beckoning to her in another, sub-surface layer. 

Their bodies stood still and silent. Half turned toward one another, Vastra’s hand upon Jenny’s shoulder, their eyes upon one another. Barely breathing, hardly blinking, and utterly connected in a way that neither, before meeting the other, had ever conceieved was possible. 

Ah, and there it was. It had summoned her into a dark room that represented a hidden scar on Vastra’s psyche. It was a place Jenny could never have accessed without her wife’s consent. Her mind’s eye represented it as a box resting before her, asking to be opened in its own trembling way. 

With unshaking mental hands, Jenny kept the box firmly in her psychic vision and lifted the mental lid very carefully. She peered within. It seemed immediately to be empty, but suddenly she found herself somewhere else entirely, swallowed by flashes of light and sound like a mighty storm. 

Now she understood what this sound was that had been echoing in her head like a ringing in one’s ears. It was not unlike a radio with the sound turned almost all the way down, just loud enough to be conscious of. It was the howling wind but also a sound that she had never known in life. It was the blood-chilling, gut wrenching roar of Vastra in the worst agony she had ever endured. A heartbreak for a love that had suddenly never existed. For a loss that she would be force to forget, the tragedy was compounded and twisted in Vastra’s timeline like a scar. To let this memory out without addressing it first would drive her—had already driven her—nearly insane. 

Jenny blinked and here they were in the same paused instant in which she had departed inward. It was her turn to hesitate. Words failed her. They could not have possibly been enough even in every language at once, so she did not speak. Rather, she opened a door. It was one that mirrored Vastra’s but her wife did not enter, perhaps gripped by similar fears that had wound around Jenny a minute prior. She reached out again and it was surprisingly easy for her now as she drew back the curtain of thought, fear, and displacement. Now they were naked as they had ever been, peering into one another unabashedly. 

“My love--“ Jenny could not finish before Vastra swept her up, fast as a bolt of lightning strikes, into an embrace as breathtaking, hard, and fierce as thunder.  

And now was another disquieting sound that Jenny had never known. It was a low pitched keening, now staccato and interspersed with a slight vibration, in time with Vastra’s choked and irregular breaths. The grip was almost crushing now, locked around her as if she were being torn away. It was faintly suffocating, but Jenny remained still and listened with great longing as her wife wept. 

<Tell me.> came Jenny’s voice in the channel between them that seemed as open as one mind. 

<I can’t let you go, Jenny. Tell me how…how can I ever let you out of my grasp?>  She had never sounded so destroyed. 

<I saw.> Jenny soothed her. <I am here.> 

Their hearts beat close together now, almost in sync. Jenny’s body was as warm as Vastra’s was cool. Both of them so incredibly emotional and alive, and wishing they could be even closer. 

“So warm, my dearest,” murmured Vastra. 

“I’ve come back.” Vastra pulled away to look into her eyes at this, so she repeated it slowly and assured her. “I am real.” 

Vastra crushed her in her arms again, burying her face in Jenny’s neck and the scent of her soft hair. “I need—“ she paused, unable to ask, her words stuck. 

“I’m yours,” replied her wife.


	3. Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dance of need, desire, and love

Once they had found their way to their bedroom, reluctantly leaving the nest of their joined arms, but not releasing clasped hands, Jenny only had a few moments to have any thoughts. They were both dressed as women, she marveled, and so similarly at that. It was as if they were two sides of the same coin, sharing not only aesthetic but modesty. She grew shy as she tended to be in the undressing stage, but her wife sensed it even as the thoughts bloomed in her mind, and gave her no chance to develop them. 

Vastra’s hands at her throat reminded Jenny of their first time, and the thick black velvet and muslin lining shredded and broke like brittle blades of grass in the Silurian’s strong, sharp grasp. When Jenny’s neck was bare, here now against her wild pulse pressed Vastra’s dry, smooth lips.  

<More of you,> Vastra was rambling in their heads, decreasingly coherent, unknowing or uncaring if Jenny heard or responded. <I must have more of you. Show me. Give me. Oh Jenny.> 

Oh these kisses went on and on. Though thoroughly arousing as they were, they were immediately more than that, and Jenny was very slightly distracted she felt each one land on every surface of her face and each inch of her exposed skin, a burning promise and prayer. 

< _Never leave me…_  

_…I’m sorry…took you for granted…_  

_…I love you!...I’ll always love…you. More…more…I must know… I must have…_  

_…you’re here._  

_Every inch…_  

_Every breath…_  

_Every crease, every expanse, and strand of hair…_  

_…My Jenny…_  

_…My wife…_  

_…_  

_My Love_. > 

 

Her strong hands came around the back of the dress and pulled it down the smooth shoulder blades and over subtle but firm muscles developed over years of training. Vastra turned her around to lay kisses upon her nape and the upper levels of her spine, then over her creamy shoulders. She closed her eyes and let herself, not guide, ask, or question, but just receive and _feel_. 

Fingers like steel in textured, supple armor traced the outline of her spine where it could be seen bisecting her back, to the edge of the corset which still sat in place. Vastra was in a rush, but not for rush of passion. That was a distant second to the inventory she now took of every detail, memorizing as she loved to do, assuring herself that all of Jenny was here. There was that vibration, and a hint of that sound that told Jenny she was weeping once more, but the quality of emotion was different. No longer only  pained, it was the sound of healing, like bones being set right after a fall.  

Vastra supported her torso on one strong arm, curved around under her stomach and chest, and she submitted as her arm was raised above her head, then bent at the elbow slightly, for a second not unlike a ballerina’s port de bras as she was then slid backward over another arm. They were dancing, almost, but Jenny kept her eyes closed and let herself be guided as Vastra ducked under her raised arm and dipped her low, kissing all the skin she encountered, then extending from armpit to forearm with these light touches. Down onto the wrist came these kisses, so hard now, that her teeth grazed the tender veins there, and then lifted and returned to the center of her palm, wetter here, for her tongue darted to taste the dip her flexed hand created, and then each finger joint, both front and back, and each pad as tenderly as a mother kisses a baby. 

Finally, the kisses, hard again, rained down over her collar bone and the rise of her smooth, warm breasts. Jenny let her arms rest around Vastra’s shoulders as her wife wrestled with the back of her corset blindly. Impatient as always, she simply ran her fingers down the laces and slashed them through. As she came up for air, Jenny opened her eyes and let herself be divested of it.   

Hands splayed behind her now, at the dip at the small of her back and bent her over to raise her breasts to hungry lips. A growl of possession and passion escaped Vastra just as Jenny cried out involuntarily, which seemed to stoke the fire even higher within both of them, as they passed their sensations back and forth across their bond, at once giving and receiving. No words needed, and no hints or guiding.  

Jenny let herself be supported totally by Vastra’s arms as she let her hands caress each distinct scale of Vastra’s cheeks, sweeping upward to the temple, the brow, and the fin-like protrusions of her skull where the scales flushed deep viridian like emeralds in the candle light, and warmed to her touch. She knew where Vastra was the most sensitive, right on the underside of each armored plate, and rubbed each crevasse firmly, eliciting murmurs of appreciation. She popped open the pearl buttons on the high, ruffled neckline of her wife’s dress. 

Jenny tasted ever like a creamy dessert, rich, warm, and full of decadence. Vastra felt alive as she teased and sucked both nipples and rubbed her strong cheeks against the curves of bare breasts, kissed between, and began to move lower, turning Jenny in her arms as she pulled backward slightly. Vastra’s dress began to come away as she did. She shrugged one shoulder then the other  to facilitate sliding free of her sleeves, which Jenny unbound as she moved down her arms. She never lost contact with her once, shifting her grip on Jenny’s hand from left to right. She did not allow Jenny a moment to stare at her, but instead pulled her close again, pressing their forms together, flush, and sweeping her into a kiss that stole their breath together. 

<More,> Vastra was begging even still, despite the fact that Jenny was denying her nothing. She kissed those lips she had often addressed, and long loved, but never until this moment, truly known. She felt the heat, searing with Jenny’s rapidly rising passion, but restrained to absorb Vastra’s. She memorized the softness and the pliant flesh that yielded ever to her, opened at her whim, and allowed her to taste within, her tongue a dainty but desperate accomplice to Vastra’s own. Here she swallowed Jenny’s every whimper, gasp, and sigh. 

Their feet paced about one another, almost entangling, but never tripping, as they turned each other this way or that as they shimmied out of skirts and underthings, never hurrying to the main act, but like strong magnets, drawn together in an instinctual pas de deux. 

Jenny’s stockings whispered down her legs and off, kissed all the way down her ankles as she leaned over Vastra’s back, walking fingers down her spine, and massaged over each floating rib before returning up to her shoulders as she rose. As she extended into a standing position, she curled Jenny back till she rolled onto the bed, and stood between her ankles, lifting her big toe to her lips. Phalanges, tarsals, metatarsals…Vastra knew all the bones in the human foot, and yet she had no words to define the beauty of the arch of Jenny’s foot, how delicately she extended it now. Certainly it was impossible to simultaneously express the power of her kicks or the intricacy and silence of her steps. Vastra’s firm minstrations warmed the muscles here and then at the calf, and thigh, as she paused to place a kiss on the back of her knee. 

Vastra smelled warm and dry, not unlike metal or new paper, hot off the press, to Jenny, mixed with the faintest indication of the incence they used to enter their trances. She pronounced her wife’s name just for the joy of feeling herself say it, and delighted in the way those blue eyes widened with pleasure. All of her senses worked. She was overjoyed. Both of them, so alive. This next kiss they shared was much harder and rougher. It brought tears to her eyes as Vastra’s vibrations rumbled through her. Alive, they seemed to be crying out in every gesture or touch. So alive. 

The bed accepted them and they fought only briefly in this moment. Who would be brought to release first? Vastra wanted it to be Jenny so ferociously that she forgot herself for a moment and bit her wife high on the chest. Her fingers dug into the human’s delicate pelvis, but it was Jenny who, finding herself on top, took the lead as she captured Vastra’s elusive, much aroused, scarlet nipple.  

And now Vastra was utterly helpless as Jenny adopted a tempo more like a duel than a dance, raining punishingly rough kisses against her lips, neck, and collarbone. She needed this, she realized, and laid back to feel her wife once more. This was Jenny, real, and full of power. Unfettered by any sense of inhibition or hesitation, she was not content to be lifted and twirled upon Vastra’s will. Each kiss punctuated her assertion of her own individual devotion like a scarlet brand upon the cool scales. Vastra cried out as Jenny’s hot mouth enveloped her extremely sensitive nipple, and thus was too distracted to protest when her wife entered her below without warning. Gone was the permission-asking, cautious Jenny, and in her place was a bonfire housed in human skin. Where Vastra might have wondered on it, reached out to foster it, or at understand it, she could no longer do a single thing more than receive the fire that rushed into her.  

Jenny’s hair had come down, and Vastra grasped it against her cheek, moaning against the silken locks as the sensation blazed into the deepest part of her body, whipped into a frenzy by this sweet human. The sensation was shapeshifting, and split from a lance head’s thrust into tiny arrows that sprang into each nerve from the soles of her feet to her crown. “Jenny,” she called. 

<I’m here,> her wife answered instantly, and Vastra, totally without resistance, flew apart like the breath of a star, crying out wordlessly like a storm. 

 


	4. Elements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opposing elements meet and combine. The foundation of the universe, and its end swirl together when two minds and hearts meld. A new, stronger bond is forged.

Vastra trailed her fingers down Jenny’s smooth, flat belly, pressing gently with the heel of her hand now, testing the tight muscles beneath the skin, while she kissed across the expansion of her ribs as she breathed. At first she thought Jenny was reclined on her back and that she laid on top, but as Jenny’s dark hair cascaded over her breasts and framed Vastra’s face, she realized with something of a start that it was the opposite. She was settled in a nest of pillows in such a way that she felt nearly weightless and Jenny sat astride, high on her chest so that she could touch her in any way.  

She cast her eyes up and saw Jenny look down to her. “You seemed to faint straightaway but your hands were still all over me the moment I was close enough.” 

Goddess, even her subconscious was desperate. Vastra didn’t pause to let it soak in. Jenny’s scent filled her as she kissed a path downward. She found that she was robbed of the larger part of her strength now, and could not, as was her habit, flip Jenny over and take over. Instead, she had to slide Jenny up onto the pillows and lobby for each subsequent inch with kisses. She tasted Jenny as if she had never before, and reveled in the shudder that arced down her spine.  

She felt the shapely globes of Jenny’s backside, and grasped them hard enough to make her yelp in excitement, exploring muscle, fat, and bone as she shifted hands to the pelvis and guided her. Jenny was quivering, as she did often after she was brought to climax, and Vastra did not have to wonder why. Their bond was open now, so they shared a great deal of sensation. This was rare, for seldom was Jenny as bold as this. It was beautiful. 

<Feel me, Jenny,> Vastra instructed, and then slid against her love like a tidal wave, first retreating far enough to be missed, only to rush back in tenfold, like the thundering hooves of horses, like Biblical flooding, or like the unbound emotion of a warrior who, in this moment, was not so different from a god. 

She recalled a story from Silurian tradition. Within them, Vastra always had taught Jenny, the soul filled the container that was the body, like a river of living water. Now, if this were so, she desired beyond anything that she could even articulate, to rush herself into Jenny and fill her so completely that she would activate even the tiniest of atoms. It was only when Jenny seemed as taut as a bowstring that Vastra finally released her in a rush. Their bodies seemed swept away in the torrent that ensued, dammed and broken free by this desperate urge to feel everything, know all of it, and at once, vow to one another something new. There would be time to understand it later. For now, Vastra was within Jenny so much that she felt their elements—heat and cold, fire and water, swirl around one another in a maelstrom like a newborn star before slowly, finally, settling into a place of peaceful equilibrium at last. 

She tumbled over and over in the sheets then with Jenny in her arms, limp, with wet cheeks from enraptured tears. Normally, she would hold her smaller human lover, but tonight, Jenny seemed to read her mind and settled Vastra’s cheek down, here, against the soft knock of her strong, beating heart. Her arms embraced her now, protectively, as if she were nothing more than a baby chick, and inexplicably, in the same moment, slipped beneath the surface of sleep, a siren’s call to her wife to follow.  

Vastra’s arms came around her waist, savoring the sensation of Jenny’s presence. The pleasure of lovemaking, yes, but more than that, just as she had been so starved for, she absorbed the memory here of each breath, beat, bead of sweat, the way the light cast itself upon her, and even the shadows’ cradle as it closed softly around them. Only then did their dreams comingle in the most gentle and natural state. 


	5. Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny is forced to confront complications as a result of her (temporary) death.

It was dark and probably cold but she couldn’t feel anything. Jenny looked around as if to call for her wife but she couldn’t speak aloud or even physically hear. Her psychic sense was wide awake though, so she was alert and on her guard.

She seemed to be outside, and above her rose the starry dome of the sky, though it appeared to be almost fake, like a diorama or a stage set. Around her were high Grecian pillars set no further apart than a double wide span of arms, arranged in seemingly endless rows. Soundlessly she walked down this row or that without aim, feeling disconnected and lost.

At this moment, she realized she was being followed. No, not followed exactly, but perhaps, paced. How long, she wasn't sure, but as she looked just out of the corner of her right eye, she could see, certainly, a large bestial shape trailing her. Since she could not speak, she reached out instead with her mind.

_Who’s there?_

_Why, it’s me._

_What is your name? Answer me._

_It is I, Jenny Flint._

At this, Jenny whirled about fiercely, drawing her katana from her hip, which she was sure she had not had only a moment before. She brandished it thus and was met now by chartreuse eyes in the darkness. “Don’t play games with me, Creature.”

_There is no game, Jenny. Don’t you recognize me? I am you. I am what you are inside, every time you look into the glass, and every time you pretend…pretend… You’re still a little human girl. Who is playing now?_

Jenny recoiled only a heartbeat before she gave a mighty leap forward, bringing the point of her sword down and forward in a solid thrust. It would have landed right between the creature’s eyes had the form before her not swirled and become as immaterial as mist. She slid to a halt, never off-balance, and whipped about, ready for a counterattack which did not land.

Here now, was the creature on the other side of the pillars again, regarding her with an expression not unlike Vastra’s. The fact that this even occurred to Jenny made her heart race with fear. The craggy, scaly face was only very faintly visible in the limited light. Now Jenny could make out protrusions like a frill topped with horns. She did not try to attack again, but adjusted the grip on her sword, wrapping fingers around it like the layers of fabric over the ray’s skin grip.

_Wake up Jenny._

It wasn’t so much the words as the wave that emanated from the psychic command. It ripped through Jenny as if she had been struck and at once she staggered with a cry of pain. To her credit, she held onto her sword as she dropped to one knee, and leaned on the point only for a second before she instead placed it parallel to the ground, still in her grip, leaning now on the hilt. It was automatic; she could not afford to damage the tip, and doing this required no thought.

Rather, she could spare no thoughts, for she was quite suddenly being ripped apart. Her throat was cut and she coughed but couldn’t as blood bubbled up in great scarlet gouts, a torrent down her chest and onto the stones. She couldn’t breathe.

She was losing fingers now, and as this occurred to her, there was a terrible pain in her heel where she was sure a throwing star had embedded itself in her Achilles' tendon.

A rapid tempo of stabs so clean they could have only been Vastra’s nailed her in the chest here and there with surgical precision, cutting into internal organs, and severing the heart muscles. She felt the burning rupture of her stomach as it opened and the high pitched screams of animals, perhaps rabbits, in her failing ears.

There now was a slash that seemed to miss the mark that cut down across the left side of her face and there she was now blind as blade, so clean and keen, excised a part of skull and ocular nerve, and bit into her brain ever so slightly.

But still, Jenny Flint did not surrender the grip on her sword, and somehow she still managed to look up at the figure who stood before her, silhouetted by the cold moon’s eye. It was a Silurian deathmask that greeted her, the figure wearing a familiar tie, vest, and dark colored pants. In gloves of fine kidskin, lined with rabbit fur, was gripped a familiar sword, which raised above her now, and in a movement she knew as intimately as her own breath, arced downward toward her.

 

The stones were cold and clean, and the pillars equally so, rising infinitely toward a static sky, upon which perched a wide white moon that seemed as large as the sun, matching it in brilliance. It looked down imperiously at a young woman who appeared as untouched and unharmed as a young babe, but who gripped in one hand a sword from another land, and failed twice to rise from her knees.

Her hands stroked her own face, then throat, and abdomen as if searching for damage that only she could see, and was convinced was there. She was in an instant, quite mad, and all the stones reverberated her agonized screams like a macabre chorus in the night.

 **

“Madame Vastra,” Strax hesitated at the door which was very unlike him. It was only for this reason that Vastra did not snap at him. She had been explicit in her desire not to be interrupted today. A case file was overdue and she had been quite stressed, so much so, that she had not even checked in on Jenny when she had heard her wife tinkering in the kitchen.

“Strax what’s the matter?” She wondered curiously as he began a very nervous kind of drumming of his tridactyl fists against the sides of his pant legs. He showed his teeth in what might have passed for a kind of smile but seemed more like a fearful grimace.

“Madame, I know you have been busy as late,” Strax explained very formally, “and believe me when I assure you I have tried, in my medical expertise, to rectify—“

“Get to the point, you frightful Imp,” Vastra snarled, rising sharply, immediately feeling something in the back of her mind grow extremely anxious. Where was Jenny again? Wasn’t she fine? She would have sensed it---

“Madame you really ought to see for yourself,” Strax replied with a strange hesitation. Normally so brutally to the point that it even tried the Silurian’s preferences for directness, Vastra read his disturbance, sitting there in the front of his mind, and picked up her skirts as she sprinted past.

 

She reached the door of the kitchen which was usually open, even when Jenny was working, and her hand reached to grip the handle and wrench it open. She did not, however, feeling something strange within. Her fingers slid to the metal and almost expected it to be hot, as if a fire raged beyond, but it was cool and passive.

There was a psychic dampening field here. It wasn’t strong, which is why it had escaped her notice, but just effective enough to stop her from reading much of anything behind the door. Vastra forced herself not to panic. Something was clearly wrong but she could hear Jenny breathing now, if she stilled her own breath.

It picked up now, as if upset, and then Jenny’s voice was immediately raised in a violent string of swear words and other verbal abuse. Vastra almost ripped the door from its hinges as she entered and tried not to appear as though she had been eavesdropping. It was like the bursting of an air bubble, or a sudden change of pressure, and at once she was within the shield and even more alarmed at the sharp angles of Jenny’s mental state.

How could I have missed this?

A mechanical spider drone perched on the table close to her. Its blue light flickered like an eye, acknowledging Vastra’s motion. “Greetings, Nemo,” she murmured to it before it skittered off. She looked at Jenny’s work table where her wife had pushed her magnifying goggles off her face and had the heels of both her hands rubbing her eye sockets tensely.

An oiled leather pad sat before her and a piece of machinery, half disassembled, with tools lay at odd angles, not remotely resembling the ordered workshop Jenny normally ran.

“Everything all right, Jenny?” Vastra asked quietly.

She certainly was not all right, but Vastra didn’t force the issue as her wife blew a long stream of air from her mouth, brushed back some stray strands of hair, and tried once again to unscrew a nearly stripped screw. The tool now slipped and nicked the delicate housing she was trying to remove.

 

It was like her fingers didn’t even work! Nothing seemed to fit right. Easy things were hard, hard things were impossible, and she couldn’t even bring herself to even make sense of it. She was numb everywhere like her body didn’t even exist in the same plane as her very frustrated mind. Jenny swore violently and hurled the screwdriver into her toolbox, followed by a piece of broken gear she had accidentally ruined earlier. There was a satisfying crashing, and she pushed back from the table hard, winging a broken axe handle into the cook fire where it flared with semi-live ash.

“Jenny!” She hadn’t even noticed her wife who suddenly grabbed both her hands and turned her toward her chest before she could do more damage. “What is the meaning of this? Tell me.” Her blue eyes held no reproach. They were full of concern and love.

Jenny didn’t even have words to explain. What could she even say? That nothing in the world felt quite real to her anymore? That neither her body nor tools or weapons seemed correct? She stared at Vastra helplessly but then there was a subtle change that she could not put her finger on.

Here now before her, holding her, was the only real thing in the world. She couldn’t find her voice to say so, as her mouth felt thick and clumsy, so she just relaxed and let Vastra search her mind. As she did, Jenny felt herself break down and cry from deep within, a melancholy that she had never understood, and felt her wife hold her steady, her harbor in the storm.

“There’s something…an alien…I…”

“Shh. Jenny, Jenny, listen to me, and trust me,” Vastra eased her goggles off her head and stroked her hair back, her expression and voice as soothing as the purring of a cat. “It’s just you. There are…things…in your memory and your soul is so recently back in your body. Shh. No, trust me, my love. Yes I believe you. I know. It’s an adjustment. You must come to terms with it. I’ve been so selfish. Yes, I will help you. I love you so.” Their voices mingled in some kind of nonsense as Jenny began to hysterically cry between protests and Vastra’s increasing reassurances.

Vastra was surprised when Jenny rose on her toes to kiss her, and then, more and more, and it was the wrong kind of kiss. It was a kiss of passion, but from Jenny, she did not feel the familiar heat of desire. She kissed her back the first time and then a few more, and felt herself grow a little weak. This little ape could always get her going, but now was not the time, so Vastra closed the door on her own appetites, and now held her beautiful, crying, and inconsolably disturbed wife at arms’ length. Jenny looked at her with undisguised hurt, and Vastra could not stand it, and crushed her to her chest in a vise-like embrace again.

“Make love to me,” Jenny pleaded.

“Oh, my wife, that isn’t what you need right now,” Vastra crooned against the dark crown of silken hair, “but I would give you anything.”

“You’re all that’s real to me,” Jenny sobbed, fisting her hands in hanks of Vastra’s skirt, or the silk of her bodice. “That night…and now… There’s just you, my darling. Please. Please.”

She had no way of knowing how Vastra broke within, over and over, and when she did speak, how it felt like razor blades. “No, my Jenny, that’s not what you need. It’s a crutch. How long will that last until you’re like this again? Jenny listen to me and trust me please. This is a process and I swear I will help you, but you need to come to terms with some things.”

“What things!” Jenny shrieked, now pushing away from Vastra, feeling rejected, and inexplicably upset, but also knowing somewhere inside that she was right.

“You’ve buried things along the way,” Vastra whispered, not moving to take her back. “Also, dying and returning to life often is a process on its own. You need to take time… Your body is like a newly reattached limb. You have phantom pains, and separate memories that resided in your psyche.”

Jenny looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Death is a great equalizer. Some of your inner demons are released into the daylight. You need some time, Dearest.” Vastra considered her next words carefully. “Perhaps working is not what you need just yet. Take some time, rest, meditate, and my love? Do eat. Anything you like, I shall procure at once. Root yourself back to your body.”

Jenny took a deep breath, her eyes looking far away, as if processing. “Wake up,” she murmured, to no one in particular. Then, with some renewed strength that made her look a bit more like herself, she nodded. “If my Missus is buying, I would love some plum pudding.”

Relieved, Vastra allowed herself to smile now, and patted Jenny on the cheek. “Wait here. I can get some straightaway.” The clouds seemed to have parted. Vastra hurried out herself, not sending Strax, to fetch what her wife desired. Surely, now everything would be all right. She would attend more closely to her wife and take care of her, and be the spouse she deserved.

This plan seemed to be going swimmingly until scarcely a week later, when she found Jenny sitting on a windowsill in her bedroom, sliding a razor blade across her wrist.

**

 

Vastra had been right, and she really did feel much better. Jenny awoke to sunshine and birdsong, and the familiar sounds of Strax preparing morning tea downstairs. From the crashing and banging, he had apparently found some form of vermin scuttling about, probably brought in by the cold weather, and was attempting to exterminate it with an inappropriately powerful Sontarran blaster.

Smiling a little to herself, she rose and wondered if she would give another shot to the repairs she had begun on a communication apparatus earlier. She hadn't been able to get herself to work in days. Every time she had, the tools had felt like they didn't fit in her hands and she had been aggravated, which, aside from any feelings she had in the presence of her wife, had been the biggest source of emotion.

Oh, but also, from somewhere deep within, now floated up an altogether different sensation. It was like a half-remembered dream that whispered to her when she was awake, to wake up, as if implying that reality was not awake enough. _Awake, awake_ , whispered Jenny's mind as she peeked out the drapes that Vastra had opened when she had risen early.

Catching her own reflection in the glass, she reached for her brush to run it through her bed-tousled hair, when suddenly she wasn't alone. There was whispering. She wasn't alone. They were with her. The recipients of every cut she had ever made, and the glowing eyes of a creature who claimed her name.

And then here was the straight razor she often used on her legs. She knew it was sharp as her hunting knives. She cared for all her tools equally, and meticulously. With the voices whispering in her ears, she reached out with numbed fingers and watched herself pick it up.

She ran the straight edge against her index finger and watched with a detached sort of fascination as the skin parted obediently on either side and a little bit of red rose up in its wake. It didn't hurt. This surprised her. Perhaps over the years her pain tolerance had reached an exceptional level. On the other hand, maybe she just hadn't committed to the cut. How did it feel to hurt like this? Vastra had never imposed a blade upon her, so she had no idea.

Remembering, Jenny turned over her right hand and transferred the razor to her left. She flexed the fingers of her dominant limb and could clearly make out two parallel scars that ran across her fingers and palm. At one point they had been so deep that she had considered it a miracle the bone hadn't shown. She remembered the calm of Vastra's healing techniques and her own disbelief, but very little of the actual sensation in that moment. She had caught the knife in midair. The achievement had escaped her though, because she had been so cross with her then-future wife. In this moment, a small door opened and she felt it. Vastra's pride in her, and her confidence in Jenny's aptitude as a student. Why had she never paused to reflect on this?

Her left hand was almost as dexterous as her right these days, and all thanks to these scars. Delicately, she let it move the razor over to the scars over her fingers and poke gently. They didn't hurt anymore of course, and even when she nicked the flesh slightly, extra clumsy in a weird way, she didn't flinch. With the same care she ran the edge along the side of her other scar, not hard, and marveled as it opened up and blood began to run, a little faster now, but with no pain. It was someone else's, not hers.

What did it really feel like to die? She didn't remember. It had happened so fast and she hadn't even been aware until it had happened. Her last memory had been her wife's face, full of a fear she had never before seen. No, that wasn't true. She had seen that look before, a couple of times. One had been during a bout of strychnine poisoning. If she regretted nothing else in her life, it would be the way Vastra looked in that last desperate moment when she wasn't sure that Jenny would live. To Jenny, it was this mixture of shock and sadness that would always be synonymous with dying.

_They_ knew what dying was like. Jenny could feel their wounds again on her own skin. Those had hurt. She had done that to them. Just because they had deserved it...was that reason enough for her to have done so? This fragile and utterly subjective thing she called justice? She had never felt so close to them, at least not since the first time, and even then, she had never known his name or anything about him except that she had chosen to see Vastra survive the encounter.

So many since that first time, all following the first so quickly she had lost count. It didn't seem possible that she had, even momentarily, fallen among them. Yet, here she was, on the other side of the divide again, and promised without any doubt by an ancient draconian creature who inexplicably adored her, that she would one day be normal again.

In time.

But not this moment. In this moment, she was still more dead than alive. With a weird and disembodied curiosity, Jenny laid the straight edge, now warm to the touch, against the tender flesh of her inner wrist, where she could feel her pulse beat against it. She had never killed someone this way. It seemed more intimate somehow. She shuddered and felt the blood from her other little cuts cause her slightly less-steady left hand to slip. What would it feel like now? She wondered. Maybe she would ask.

There was a movement from the side of the room that she could not, even on her best day, follow. In her altered state, she was practically in slow motion and could not stop the razor from leaving her fingers or even cry out before Vastra suddenly snatched her up from where she sat at the window. “ _Jenny what the hell are you doing_?” her wife screamed in her face, her hands like twin vises around her wrists, applying pressure to stop the bleeding.

Scarlet ran in rivers like lace down their joined hands and Jenny suddenly found herself ripped from the buoyancy of her altered state and thrust impolitely into full reality complete with sound and depth and sensation. Her hands were not in the worst pain she had ever felt but they stung and burned something fierce. “Nothing,” she tried to say, but Vastra wasn't even hearing her, now as her forked tongue lapped at her wounds. The enzymes in her saliva would help end the bleeding but apparently Jenny had nicked herself a little deeper on the wrist. In time with her pulse, it would not stop erupting. She felt the room shift beneath her, and again saw a similar look of sickened fear in Vastra's eyes. She felt guilty for it as she sank down in the long dark skirts.

She heard her wife's voice cut through the haze that closed in, not very different from how it had been not long ago.

“ _Strax_!”

 

Jenny had a headache when she woke up, but felt, for the first time in a week or more, keenly awake. She looked around for Vastra. Surely her wife was present if she was feeling so... alive. However, as she pushed herself up in bed, she realized that while she was still in the bedroom they shared, only Strax the Sontarran was there to greet her. He seemed to be calibrating a piece of diagnostic equipment. As she moved, he looked up from what he was doing.

“No need to look so disappointed, Miss Flint,” he assured her smartly, “I guarantee that you are in the best care in England. Or wherever it is we are.”

She grimaced at her headache and nodded. “Yes, that's right. England.” She took the glass of water he offered her, for once, not suspicious of what might be in it. “Where is Madame Vastra?”

Strax now looked slightly bothered. “Er, away, Miss Flint. She was so overcome by mammalian weakness that she had to take her leave of us for the time being.”

“Reptilian,” Jenny murmured.

“Beg your pardon?”  
“She's a reptile.”

“I know that, you idiotic fleshling,” Strax snapped in his arrogant but oddly not unkind way, “but her weakness was so mammalian it was just embarrassing. I do believe she was weeping. It does not befit one of her command status. Perhaps she will be summarily shot and--” He noticed the dirty look Jenny was shooting him and fell quiet, handing Jenny an aspirin before continuing on a different subject. “She was filled with fear to lose you again.” It was not an accusation, merely a blunt statement just left there in the open air.

Guilt once again assailed her. “Strax, I wasn't--”

“She knows.” Strax cut her off and began to polish something from his vest pocket that looked alarmingly like a grenade. “She probed your mind with the prejudice of a Sontarran lobotomy. It was quite a fascinating ritual. You see, first she had to--”

“I don't really want to know, thanks,” Jenny waved him off, and ignored his frown.

“Once she discovered that you had not intended to take the coward's escape from future battles, she left me in charge of your medical needs, and left. She will be back before long, I imagine. You strange mating creatures are never quite able to part with any sort of permanence.” Strax rolled his eyes as if he found this somehow disgusting.

“Strax,” Jenny couldn't believe she was about to ask this, but it was already coming out her mouth, “what is dying like?”

The Sontarran pursed his lips. “Glorious. The culmination of one's warrior journey and...well... in my case, I failed to do even that, so it was just painful and humiliating really. And now I find myself indentured to Madame Vastra. Life is so curious. Death is even moreso.”

This wasn't comforting. Jenny looked down at the water in her hands. “Tell me... how I came back to life.”

“Well it was quite a dramatic and messy affair,” Strax began with a chuckle, “but I must say I outdid myself with--” he paused as clear saline drops began to drip from her eyes. At first he wondered if the air was too dry and she was in need of lubrication but corrected himself and recognized the strange emotional response. He sighed and began again so as not to further offend her. Doing so would surely anger his employer. He collected his thoughts. They never seemed to come together as perfectly as they once had in his prime. He decided not to suggest to Miss Flint that this too was a side effect of his aborted death experience. “She screamed at me,” he finally admitted, “hysterically, like a beast. She swore she would send me after you if I failed.”

Jenny listened silently as he related the story.

“I must admit I quite admired her in that moment though, Miss Jenny,” Strax reported with some hesitation, “in fact, more then than in any moment before or hence. You see, I had never seen the Madame so weakened or vulnerable, and so undone. Yet, never had she seemed so fierce. Death is the end of the battle, and there you were. Still warm, but definitely dead by medical criteria. Madame Vastra though...It was as if the battle had just begun and she was intent on fighting it. All of us would have quailed-- well, perhaps myself excluded-- but she confronted it, unflinching. She believed, not in me, I am ashamed to say, but rather, in you, and that you would reach out and find your way back. Which, I suppose you did, with my expert help of course.”

It was the most she had ever heard Strax say in one breath. Jenny let his words digest for a few moments before she muttered an apology to him.

“For the Madame's threatening me with that horrible blade of hers? Oh it is nothing, Miss Flint. Let me tell you a secret.” He looked side to side as if expecting the walls to overhear and tattle. She wasn't sure she wanted to know any secrets, but she didn't protest. “I would have welcomed it, had I failed.” He sighed, “I am a huge failure in many things, which is why I find myself in my current line of work, obviously. To allow a comrade to fall, and be unable to help or even avenge him? Well, I wouldn't deserve to live.”

Jenny didn't know how to take this oddly sentimental statement and simply blurted, “I'm a girl, Strax.”

He looked annoyed and confused. “Yes yes you daft boy. I know. Well, you need to rest. I have been running a blood replenishment protocol on you and your energy will be low for a day or so. Let us try to put this behind us, eh? We are still comrades, and we will need every last man if we are to be victorious.” He reached over and gave her a congenial thump on the back as he rose from the chair. “I'll bring you some nourishment later in the evening. Perhaps by then, your mate will have returned.”

“Thank you, Strax.”

He paused at the door, looked as if he wanted to say something more, but instead, merely nodded curtly, and exited.

 

In the wee hours of the night, Jenny surfaced from a relatively peaceful sleep to become distantly aware that Vastra was crawling into bed with her. She reached out and felt the contours of her scaly face and noticed the way the light made her eyes seem to glow like embers. How similar it was to...to...

_Ah_ , Jenny remembered thinking, fading again, _So this is what I have become._

 

 

 

 


	6. Reincarnation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny is more than what she was, but she has to discover how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having some formatting issues guys. I'll get to the bottom of it and fix asap.

“Die, Human Filth!”  
The high pitched report of a Sontarran blaster firing a volley of plasma rounds rent the humid air. Two figures dodged skillfully out of the way and immediately doubled back to take the offensive. The larger of the two went low and struck with the ruthlessness of a cobra before the shooter could reload. Down he went, hard on his knees, and the two engaged in some close combat action, the shooter attempting a buttstroke to his assailant’s face with his weapon, and the attacker, struggling to get enough range to swing a long sword, and forced to defend using the hilt and handle alone.

  
A step had been missed. It should not have come to this. A well-rehearsed play was short a critical player. “Jenny!” Vastra roared as she dodged Strax’s rifle and struggled to kick him away.

  
And there she was, finally, having failed to hit her marks with mock throwing stars—in fact, having failed to throw them at all—rushing in now with her own blade, much slower than she had once been. It wasn’t a loss. Vastra could make up for it.  
The Silurian snapped out her tongue and ripped the rifle away while simultaneously shoving leg under armpit and arms around the back in a rippling wave till she had Strax from behind in a choke hold. It wouldn’t last long as he was physically stronger, but her superior flexibility had won her a short advantage. She watched Jenny lunge in—

  
And stop short.  
And drop her sword.

 

“Please let me go with you!” Jenny pleaded, her voice cracking now like a child’s before a crying fit. She was dressed in black, totally armed and ready for the mission, but Vastra had sent Strax to the carriage ahead, and turned to tell Jenny to stand down.

  
“Why can’t I come? We rehearsed this. I am a part of this plan. We have been preparing for this extraction for months, Vastra!” Jenny struggled to contain her frustration and set her teeth together, lowering her chin.

  
Vastra’s gentle tone and somber facial expression made her want to scream even more. “I can’t afford for you to freeze up like you did the other day. You’ll endanger us all, especially yourself.”

  
Jenny tightened her grip on her sword, strapped to her side. “That happened once. You’ve seen me before and hence. I am more powerful than ever. You have said it yourself. I am as much your sister as I am your wife.”

  
Vastra’s ever-cool hands laid upon Jenny’s over the handle of the katana. “Yes my love, that is true, but in those days before and hence, you have never once gone on the offensive with your weapons, nor have you so much as touched the tools on your work bench. Your talent, work ethic, and proficiency are undeniable. I have never seen you so improved, but what good what it do as your team leader to risk you unnecessarily before you are ready? And,” she held up a hand as Jenny tried to protest, “what kind of wife would I be if I put you in danger without adequately appraising your readiness? I could not live with myself if a single hair of yours were harmed.”

  
“I can do it without my weapons,” Jenny insisted. She sighed at her hunting knives, laced to her leg. “I just can't… Feel them right now. I’m getting back. I’m sure I am. I need to fight in the real world, Darling.”

  
“I affectionately disagree,” Vastra replied evenly, unpatronizingly. “Your tools are rejecting you. You, in your recent rage and lapses in judgement, shall we say, have abused them. You have made enemies of one another and so cannot function as a team. It is a dangerous thing to have a blade rebel in battle.”

  
“So what then? I’m just out? Back to endless cleaning and cooking and—“ Jenny sputtered but was stopped.

  
“Listen to me. They will forgive you. Just as when we quarrel, we return to one another out of love and respect. You are beloved by materials and machines alike. If you learn to listen to yourself, and fill in all the new areas of your existence, you will once again inspire their respect. Spend your time contemplating this. In a few days we will try again.” Vastra laid her palm gently on Jenny’s cheek, and then a heartbeat later, was gone leaving her wife silent in the entryway.

 

That had been four days ago. Jenny still didn’t know exactly what her wife had meant, but she had spent all her free time in the training room anyway. She couldn’t pick up her knives or even her beloved katana. It pained her too much to imagine her weapons, like extensions of her body, to feel dead and heavy in her hands. Her body wanted to move though, not think, not sit still and meditate. She wasn’t sure she could blend it all together. How could one think, not think, and move?

  
It was probably a waste of time, but she did suddenly feel the need to stretch, which was the first really nagging physical sensation she had really felt in days other than when Vastra was distracting her. She clicked her heels together, feet out at a forty-five degree angle, in a first stance. Perhaps she had intended to practice a kata from her early apprentice days, but instead, she rose upward.

  
Her feet obeyed, peeling the heels off the floor first, followed by the arches, until she was up on her toes. She did her best not to sit into her ankles, thereby tipping her big toes up. It came to her naturally to stack the joints and align them so her ankles were straight and all ten of her toes splayed on the floor, bearing her weight. Her calves at first seemed to protest, but obeyed, squeezing along with her thighs to keep her knees straight, so that her whole lower body was supported.

  
She tucked her tailbone so she wouldn’t be tempted to create a counterbalance with her hips. No, they needed to be stacked over her base. She kept her torso level and lifted her chest then through the sternum, breathing slowly. Her eyes slid closed as she lifted the crown of her head to achieve some axial extension through her whole spine.

  
As she did, she raised her arms above her head in a stretch. Then, like something out of a dream, she gently bent her left elbow to create a bowed shape, with the palm faced toward herself. Her right arm, she swept out instead to her side, a matching arc with her palm in, parallel to the floor.

  
Her fingers did not quite meet when her arms lowered and closed, still rounded as if carrying a large ball. Here, she balanced still. It had not come naturally to her, but years as Vastra’s student had given her many enhancements. She did not command her muscles but rather coaxed them and praised her bones’ lightness. They seemed to lift themselves.

  
She raised her left knee now, keeping her foot pointed, and extended the leg as straight and high as she could manage. She wasn’t flexible but she was strong and her balance was good. She held her leg here until it began to burn just a little, and rotated it outward, to the side, trying with a good deal of success to keep her hips level and faced forward. Finally, she bent her knee until the points of her toes touched her other knee. She lowered it slowly and rolled her feet down slowly till her heels met on the floor.

  
She repeated the general exercise with her right leg, pressing down through her left to maintain balance. It felt tight but strong. It was here that Vastra appeared from behind her. She cradled Jenny and took her hands as she opened her eyes and smiled up at her wife without thinking. It was suddenly effortless.

  
Vastra reversed the grip of their hands above Jenny’s head so that she rotated on her toes like a spring uncoiling, and faced her, before dropping her hands to her waist and, as Jenny coiled again and sprang, guided her in a pirouette. They moved in sync, as had been their way for longer than Jenny remembered. Vastra’s steps light and soft, twining behind hers as she crossed her ankles, set the ball of her right foot on the floor, then stepped out with her left foot in a step before pulling her right heel to the toes of her left, a three-step pas de bourre.

  
She accomplished a light jump and another slow turn as Vastra came up with her. This and that way they went as feet stepped light and flirting before Vastra finally caught her and dipped her shallowly in one arm. She stared down with undisguised awe, as if seeing Jenny for the first time. Truly, it had been awhile since it had been like this, so strong, and in sync. “You’re so beautiful, Wife,” she murmured.

  
Jenny’s eyes were surprised and excited. “I feel it,” she whispered, “I don’t know how. I was never good at this…but I feel…like I fit my skin again, if just for a little while. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  
She wasn’t prepared when Vastra pulled her abruptly upright and embraced her tightly. “It truly is,” she replied into the rich darkness of Jenny’s flowing hair.

  
Gently withdrawing only a short distance, Jenny let herself be dipped low again as Vastra’s lips descended upon hers. It was a kiss deeper than most, and without the teasing seduction of tongues and teeth. As Jenny exhaled, she felt Vastra breathe for her once, then twice, pushing air into her lungs, filling her with her own life force. This life-giving air seemed to seek out every bit of her, physical and mental, and fill every crevice with adoration. As the parted and then kissed again, holding one another, Jenny felt the strangest sensation. It was as if she had fallen in love all over again, both with Vastra, and herself. It was more than just coming back to life. That had only been the first part.

  
What had happened to Jenny was nothing short of reincarnation. She had been reborn into a familiar skin, perhaps, but she was made anew, both of the ancient dragon and of Man, simultaneously hunter, killer, and nurturer and lover. There was so much left undone before she would be ready, Jenny realized, but this thought was not accompanied by disappointment. The road that she had begun to walk now had a destination and trajectory. 

 _I will never let her down again_ , she promised herself, and the thought which followed began to reveal her next steps. Reparations and apologies needed to be made to the other parts of herself. A vision of a knife, slightly rusted and broken at the tip, dull from abuse and overuse, floated into her mind, and, like an open door, into Vastra's.

"Darling what is it now?" Vastra wondered without annoyance at having their intimate moment now forestalled as Jenny's mind drifted.

"Come my love," Jenny responded, eyes now wide with excitement and inspiration. "I need your help with my workshop." She threaded her fingers in with her wife's and led her toward the kitchen, bright with purpose.


End file.
